I’ll admit right here that I love the Dance Central franchise, and it’s one of those games that will get my family together. Today, Harmonix made a huge announcement about the upcoming third entry in the series. Revealed today are 11 new tracks that will be in the game as well as the official release date.

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When Ubisoft pushed out PowerUp Heroes last year, I immediately saw it as a shovelware title. There was little promotion in the lead-up to it, and it was just suddenly released at a budget price point. When the title showed up at my door, I gave it a try, and found myself pleasantly surprised. I immediately felt like I was back on the playground during recess, running around pretending to be super heroes fighting each other. The mechanics were good, the graphics were fun, and the game as a whole was an unlooked for success. Now, Ubisoft is bringing the same concept of PowerUp Heroes to a AAA property: Marvel’s Avengers. Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is scheduled for a Fall 2012 release, and will be available for the Wii U and the Xbox 360 Kinect. Read the full story

Whether you care to admit it or not, you watched Dragon Ball Z on Cartoon Network, and you LOVED IT. Who didn’t look forward to sitting down and watching episodes of power-ups that lasted so long they would make the Energizer bunny jealous? E3 is full of news, and with Namco Bandai busy announcing games and releasing screenshots, I’m here to pass them on to you. You can probably guess what game this is for, since it’s in the title and I mentioned Dragon Ball Z earlier…It’s Dragon Ball Kinect! Read the full story

If rhythm is a dancer, then call me rhythm. Oh, snap! Now that I feel incredibly old for making a musical reference that only about 20% of you will understand, let’s get to the point! Last October, about a week before my 29th birthday, Dance Central 2 was released to critical acclaim. Today, at the Microsoft E3 press conference down in sunny, clear skies Los Angeles, CA, Dance Central 3 was announced. It’s coming to Xbox 360 and Kinect this fall, so get your dancing shoes shined! Read the full story

Today, along with confirmation that Bethesda is currently “hard at work” putting together the first Xbox 360 wave of new quests, locations, and more, we learned that, sometime this month, we will be receiving a free patch update to Skyrim with some big additions. Well, I suppose you could say one big addition that affects multiple aspects of the game, but either way, voice commands via Xbox 360 Kinect are making their way to Skyrim. Aside from the highly desirable, and somewhat obvious ability to speak in the Dragon’s tongue and activate Shouts, you will be able to issue ally commands, quickly change your left/right/dual equipped items, navigate your level constellations, quick save/load, sort items, navigate the map, and more. Curious to see it in action? Check out the video below: Read the full story

With each passing day, it seems that George Orwell’s vision for the future becomes more and more a reality. 1984? 2012. Monitoring systems are everywhere, and in certain cases they are celebrated. We are digitally connected in a way that is absolutely unprecedented, which provides us with the benefit of instant information retrieval and communication anywhere, any time, but also ties us into a massive network of personal information and data that can be mined for less than altruistic purposes. Read the full story

This one’s a couple of days late, but I blame technology, the harsh, cruel mistress that deals us all a slap on the face at one point or another. Due to unavoidable circumstances, we were unable to record on Sunday for a Monday release. We did record Monday evening, but technology (the aforementioned harsh, cruel mistress) decided to lose our recording file. Today, we attempted to recreate our conversation (with varying levels of success) in order to provide you with our weekly gab. Unfortunately, this can only be considered a tribute to last night’s episode, which was the absolute best podcast episode anyone has ever recorded in the history of podcasting. PROVE THAT IT WASN’T! YOU CAN’T. Anyway, this brings us to yet another episode of Marooners’ Talk. Episode 17, titled “Scandal and Success on the Internet (The Tribute),” is…special. Read the full story

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This weekend I was all ready to avoid the Mass Effect demo.  I didn’t want any spoilers at all, I wanted to walk into the opening of the game fresh so I could fully experience it as it was intended.  I was doing a good job of avoiding the demo too, until news came out that the PC version was available for download and my resolve disappeared.  Less than an hour later I was playing the PC demo and downloading the 360 version so I could check out the Kinect support as well.  Before I get into the meat of the demo let me just say that the opening sequence still has the same emotional impact on me after 3 playthroughs as it did on the first and I can’t wait to get my hands on the full game in a few weeks. Read the full story

In an effort to ruin as many relationships as possible on Valentine’s Day, Bioware released the demo for Mass Effect 3 today on Xbox LIVE, PSN and PC. The demo features the all-out attack by the Reapers on Earth, as well as a single-player mission from late in the game. Read the full story

I remember sitting in the crowded aisle of the Microsoft press conference at E3, watching the presentations with mixed reactions. Some I just could not care less about if I were paid to care less about them, while some filled me with childlike glee and anticipation. When Tim Schafer of Doublefine took the stage to present Once Upon A Monster, the Kinect based Sesame Street co-op game, I remembered the joy and entertainment I got out of Sesame Street as a child, and began to eagerly look forward to the rest of the presentation, and to the eventual release of the game. Read the full story